Drawing the line: when students design learning and supervisors eat cookies

Abstract

Today, different ways of being in the world and learning in the world require a revised attitude with regards to design research and supervision. The paper describes a co-creative approach to supervision which draws on an empathetic understanding of members in a learning space. This requires time and the development of care and authentic openness to the Other, as each conversationalist discovers and re-discovers him or herself in the Other, according to Webb (1997). The Design Research Activities Workgroup (DRAW) initiative embraces this idea as it re-interprets in a critical way the interaction between supervisors and post-graduate students and how they swap roles to become expert or novice at different times, putting a different slant on supervision. We adopt an interpretivist stance and a phenomenological methodology to interrogate the value and meaning of DRAW through using a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. Questionnaires look at the level of study and the duration of contact with DRAW and exit interviews establish the extent of support that this initiative offered to the researchers in the group. This is done to measure if and how the co-creative approach to research and supervision enhances both supervisor and student experience in a specific community of practice.